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In 1941, Georges de Mestral was in a Swiss forest walking his dog when he noticed his socks were dotted with small burrs. Looking under the microscope, he saw the barbed covering of the seeds had hooked onto the looped fibres in his clothes.

Zebrafish are unsung heroes of contemporary science. The humble tropical freshwater fish is an under-appreciated species that has helped scientists worldwide to make new discoveries and develop new technology.

Long before the H7N9 novel coronavirus emerged in the mainland, University of Hong Kong microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung, along with other researchers, warned the world that if another Sars-like pandemic struck, the disease would likely come from an animal. Some even went as far as to pinpoint the bird as a carrier.

The sentiment that "the most important thing in life is having a child" is universal. This Sunday, the first family day after his death, we will attribute it to someone on record as having said it - scientist Robert Edwards, father of five. His Nobel Prize-winning research led to millions of families sharing the joy of parenthood otherwise denied to them by infertility or difficulty in conceiving naturally.

An urgent hunt is under way across Scandinavia for the culprit causing testicular cancer rates 10 times the global mean. Scientists suspect a man-made substance or interaction between substances which disrupts hormones, possibly before birth.

Although humans have explored the earth and gained insights into far flung reaches of the universe, our brains remain mysterious. Indeed, the human brain has been described as the most complex structure known to mankind.

People's beliefs about the causes of obesity can affect their own weight, my research has shown. If you think lack of exercise is the primary cause of obesity, you are more likely to be overweight than someone who implicates poor diet.

The medical faculty receives only three to five donated corpses each year. Many of the 20 corpses needed for research and autopsy training come from the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department which collects unclaimed bodies of homeless people.

An intensive campaign to combat HIV/Aids with costly antiretroviral drugs in rural South Africa has increased life expectancy by more than 11 years and significantly reduced the risk of infection for healthy individuals, according to new research.

In a study titled "Myths, Presumptions, and Facts about Obesity" published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, the authors scoured popular media and scientific literature for obesity-related myths and presumptions and weighed them against scientifically proven facts.

We use phrases like "physically handicapped" with increasing unease, preferring those that are more positive-sounding such as "differently abled". But such politically correct euphemisms may prove to be prophetic. Extraordinary advances in medical technology have already improved the conditions of disabled individuals and promise even greater things in the near future.